Samsung drops 3G lawsuit against Apple in favor of a different strategy

Both Apple and Samsung have been busy attempting to sue each other into oblivion, with the former claiming that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringed upon their designs while the latter claimed that 3G-capable iOS devices infringed upon their 3G technology patents, but now it looks like Samsung may be rethinking their strategy.
According to FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller, Samsung appears to have given up their attacks on Apple via the 3G patent route. It seems that the South Korean company has finally acknowledged that the 3G license was covered by Apple’s payment for the Qualcomm chips found in devices like the iPhone 4S, but this doesn’t mean that Samsung has decided to throw in the towel.
Samsung claims that the dropping of the Qualcomm challenge was mainly to streamline a case, and have instead decided to sue Apple over four different patents, although the exact nature of these patents remain unknown for now. Will Samsung succeed this time round? We guess we will have to wait and find out.

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AT&T’s Galaxy S II Gets Maintenance Upgrade to Android 2.3.6

AT&T is issuing an upgrade to Android 2.3.6 for owners of the Galaxy S II (not the Skyrocket, the original). There’s not much more to add than that since this was simple bug-fixing upgrade so be sure to grab it with no delay and, as always, don’t panic if you don’t get it right away. Get to Settings > Software update > Check for updates to get started. [Samsung via AC]

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Tablet sales up 264 percent, but miss targets, says IDC

IDC says 18.1 million media tablets were shipped in this year's third quarter, an increase of 264.5 percent compared with last year, and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 23.9 percent. Shipments fell short of IDC's original forecast of 19.2 million units, but the research company sees "strong demand" for this year's fourth quarter, thanks partly to shipments of Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble's Nook Color. IDC has therefore increased its forecast for 2011 slightly, from 62.5 million to 63.3 million units.

The forecasts cover media tablet shipments to channels, not sales to consumers.

Apple was the market leader, shipping 11.1 million units in this year's third quarter compared with 9.3 million units last time. Its market share slipped slightly from 63.3 percent to 61.5 percent. Samsung took a distant second place with a 5.6 percent market share. Hewlett-Packard was third with a 5.6 percent market share, followed by Barnes & Noble (4.4 percent) and Asus (4.0 percent).

HP entered and left the market during the quarter, shifting 903,354 units of its TouchPad, mostly at fire-sale prices. Barnes & Noble shipped 805,458 units, according to IDC. RIM did not make the Top 5 table, having seen its shipments reportedly tumble from 500,000 units in this year's first quarter to 200,000 in Q2 and 150,000 in Q3 (when, thanks to price reductions, it sold more PlayBooks than it shipped).

The media tablet market is still small enough to be changed dramatically by individual product launches. IDC says in a statement:

"After ceding share in 3Q11 (down to 32.4 percent from 33.2 percent the previous quarter), IDC expects Android to make dramatic share gains in 4Q11 growing to 40.3 percent. That increase is due mostly to the entrance of Amazon's Kindle Fire, and to a lesser extent the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, into the market. The share increase comes at the expense of Blackberry (slipping from 1.1 percent to 0.7 percent), iOS (slipping from 61.5 percent to 59.0 percent), and webOS (slipping from 5 percent to 0 percent). Despite HP's announcement last week that it would contribute webOS to the Open Source community, IDC does not believe the operating system will reappear in the media tablet market in any meaningful way going forward."

The media tablet category is somewhat arbitrary. IDC used to count all of Barnes & Noble's products in the eReader category, which is dominated by the Amazon Kindle range. Also, IDC may find it difficult to track sales of the Kindle Fire separately, since Amazon does not publish sales figures.

Separately, Amazon announced yesterday that "that Kindle devices remain the hottest products this holiday season – for the third week in a row, customers are purchasing well over 1 million Kindle devices per week, and Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago."

@jackschofield

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Tips and tricks for your new Galaxy Nexus

After a longer wait than anyone anticipated, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus has landed on US shores under the auspices of Verizon Wireless. This is a totally different kind of Android phone running completely new software. Despite Google’s attempt to make Android more user-friendly, some of the most interesting features are still not exposed to the average user. With that in mind, let’s go over the three things that you should do as soon as you unbox your brand new Galaxy Nexus.

Set up Data Usage

One of the new features in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is a very robust Data Usage meter. For users that have capped mobile data plans, this can be a real money saver. The data monitor is available in the main settings page under Data Usage. This interface has a toggle for disabling mobile data at the top, and a large graph below it.

Tap on the graph and drag up or down to move the orange Warning line to just short of your monthly data cap. When the phone has reached this volume of data, a notification will appear in the status bar. This is nice, but if a user doesn’t see the notification, the data cap could still be blown. Luckily, Android 4.0 is smart enough to actually shut you down if things get out of hand.

Tap the check box next to “Set mobile data limit” to set a hard stop for your data guzzling ways. This option produces a second red line on the graph. Just drag this one to someplace above the orange one. To avoid overages completely, leave it just below the data cap. Alternatively, set it at a level over the cap that you would still be comfortable paying.

Down below the graph, Android also aggregates data usage by app so you can figure out what is hogging all the data. Tapping on any of these will bring up a detailed report of its activity.

Turn on GPU acceleration

Ice Cream Sandwich supports hardware accelerated drawing of 2D surfaces just like Honeycomb did, but now that power is at the user’s control. Developers are being encouraged by Google to enable this feature in apps, but we need not wait for them. Hardware acceleration can be forced on with minimal risk.

In the main settings screen, scroll down the the bottom and find “Developer options.” About two-thirds of the way down is the listing we need and it’s called “Force GPU rendering.” Enabling this will speed up the interface drawing of all the apps on the phone. Activities like scrolling and swiping will be more responsive and just plain nicer-looking.

Be aware that some apps might tolerate this better than others. The user interface could be broken in small, or more significant ways in these apps. If something seems broken, try toggling GPU rendering off.

Get used to real folders

As part of the home screen redesign, Google has added a new way of making folders. Android has always had folders, but in the past they were clunky and unattractive. ICS folders are so easy that there’s no reason not to base your experience around them.

To make a folder, drag any app icon on top of another, and let go. The result is a folder with both the apps in it. Anyone that’s used an iPhone recently will recognize this as almost the same system Apple uses. When opened, the apps in a folder can still be dragged around for better organization within the folder. Dragging an icon out of the folder returns it to the home screen.

Folders in ICS work on any home screen panel, and even in the dock area next to the app drawer icon. By making folders usable, Google has probably changed the way people will use the Android home screen.

There is, of course, much more to do with Android 4.0 on the Galaxy Nexus, but these are three easy steps that will get any user off on the right foot. ICS will reveal all its secrets in time, but hopefully not too long.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia smartphones get 50GB of free cloud storage

As teased earlier, Sony Ericsson has announced its tie up with Box.net to provide 50GB of free cloud storage for Xperia smartphone users. If you own an Xperia smartphone, all you have to do Sign up or log in to Box for Android on any Xperia phone by 31st December 2012 and this free storage will get activated.
You can grab Box for Android from here. This offer is valid for any phone including and released after Xperia X10 across the world. Sony Ericsson is the second company after LG to provide 50GB of free cloud storage.

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Bell Canada Ice Cream Sandwich update plans leaked

According to a leaked Bell document, this Canadian telecom operator will be releasing Android 4.0 update for HTC Sensation in February 2012, making it one of the first phones after Galaxy Nexus on the network to run on Ice Cream Sandwich.
This document also revealed the ICS update dates for HTC Raider, and Samsung Galaxy S II, which are scheduled to roll-out around March, and April next year.
This is no guarantee that these updates will come right on time, but it certainly gives us an idea of when to expect the updates.

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Consumers love Android, but developers are stuck on Apple

Android is taking the mobile world by storm as more handsets and tablets are Android powered, but as far as where the developers hang their hat, Apple is the place to be. Right now Android is easily the top selling mobile platform, Android powered handsets are outselling Apple iPhones by a ton and the Android Market just hit its 18 billionth download. An analytics firm, called Flurry, says that app developers are still choosing Apple’s iOS over Android almost 3 to 1.
As developers complete their apps, they set up analytics from Flurry so that the company can get a sneak peak at what is on the horizon in the mobile market. According to Flurry, the company deals with more than 55,000 companies across more than 135,000 applications. Flurry did a recent study to see how many projects were started for each quarter and the report showed that in the first quarter 63 percent were iOS and only 37 percent were Android. By the third quarter, developers had started projects with Apple iOS almost 75 percent of the time, while Android based projects feel to 25 percent. The fourth quarter was estimated, but the numbers didn’t change much only adding another 2 percent to Android giving them 27 percent and Apple 73 percent.
Flurry said in a blog post, “Over the year, developer support for Android has declined from more than one-third of all new projects, at the beginning of the year, down to roughly one-quarter by the end. While the market nearly doubled for both platforms, we believe key events changed the proportion of support between these two platforms.” Some of the factors that Flurry believes contributed to the numbers were the iPhone going to Verizon and Sprint and the launch of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S this year.
Flurry has an idea as to why the developers like Apple 3 to 1 over Android. One issue is fragmentation from Google “not curating the Android Market”. The second issue is money, as more developers say they make 3 to 4 times more with iOS apps. The last reason Flurry says effects the developers call on what operating system to use is the act of getting paid. Apple required secured payment before apps can be purchased, ensuring developers get paid, but Google does not require that for mobile app downloads.

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Evernote for Android Update Tightens Things Up a Little Bit

Evernote has recently gottenn a major facelift and now the team behind its Android application are making sure their ducks are in a row. They have updated their application to spruce up a few minor things with a redesign of the login and registration screen, new icons to differentiate between different notebook types and your general slew of bug-fixing goodness. Find the full details below and head to the Android market fo your download.
What’s in this version:

1. Fix force close when selecting Settings
2. Adds single note sharing activation and deactivation options
3. New icons to visually differentiate notebook types
4. Redesigned login and registration screens
5. Faster access to note editing and options

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SlingPlayer for Google TV Now Available

SlingPlayer fans can now take their content to the big screen as the Android application has finally been adapted to Google TV. While the team at Slingbox is only detailing it for the Logitech Revue it is known to work on Google TV products from other manufacturers. This one’s not in the Android market but it should be in the Google TV apps repository so be sure to check for it there under All Apps > Spotlight > TV and Movies. [SlingMedia via GTVSource]

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